watched the clone sub50. could stop after 20s to see 8.3 cls. clearly speeded up. also no sweeper who can get several sub50s in a relatively short time needs 84 flags and does only 10 left clicks. ok, the right click counter is off by 1.4 cls, which means the total cls is only a bit above 6. still, this sub50 is fake and therefore he must not be listed on msinfo - except maybe in a list of people who tried to send it fake scores.

Things I notice: The expert videos look sped up with very fast/wiggly mouse movement and crazy bursts of click speed and reaction time, with the 48.94 being particularly silly looking. I watched the Arbiter one on 0.8x speed and it looks a lot more reasonable; this would work out to ~60s time. He has very poor efficiency (under .5) with both low Correctness (spam clicking) and low Throughput (bad path). I also saw weird records on Windows MS, 4-19-46.

My conclusion is that it looks like this is a player of low flag placement skill who is used to moving and clicking overly fast to compensate. The videos are probably, but not certainly, sped up - there are other players with similar cl/s and similar IOE, and some parts of Kamil's videos (which we know are legitimate) look sped up in the same way. It's possible that we have an intentional cheater, but also possible that this player has a bug with his computer that makes all MS clones play slowly (at least on Expert!), and that he never noticed the problem because it had always been that way, so he never got an unreasonably fast time. I encountered a similar bug once on hi-games, and recorded a few times that were about 20-30% better than my normal performance before I noticed something was wrong.

Thanks for the critical (!) reviews. As mentioned to DM, some of the above comments were perhaps the most flattering i've had - although surely not intentioned as such.
Thought it wise to post a defense. The video below is not of great quality, but should be sufficient to gauge my style of play. It's on Arbiter (52.27s) - the best i can produce in the limited time frame for live filming.
Exp_52.27_3BV=195_3BVs=3.73

my thoughts? i'm confused. it's too soon after the last cheating case. i retreat my first reaction and change my mind to 'this needs further investigation'. i thought that my solving style used to be the worst possible - well, maybe i find some more time for this on the weekend. for now i feel a bit uncomfortable about these solves.

It looks like you need to be a mod or privileged user to attach files - I can't do that either. If you have a profile on minesweeper.info, you could upload it into your replay folder, or you could send me an email and attach it - I'll upload it for you.

But I'd be really, really interested in that replay, and I'm sure quite a few others are, as well. I'm not going to lie to you, your play style is horribly inefficient to the point of being really uncommon, I don't blame anyone for thinking that this is sped up.

However, for now, especially if I see the replay, this seems to be legit to me. Especially as we have replays from other clones as well. As a matter of fact, if we don't find compelling evidence that this is false, I personally think we need to accept it, as it has been verified in pretty much any possible way, aside from meeting in real life. A video of your mouse setup/movements would further strengthen your claim.

Is there any chance you'll be able to attend a tournament at some point?

I think that this guy is very likely legitimate. Overflagging does not necessarily make him a cheater - watching games of early sweepers with scores comparable to Mohamed shows similar excessive flagging. Examples of this are Dan Cerveny and David Barry 44 and 50 seconds games. Also the mouse movement doesn't seem speed up to me, take any game played by someone with a time of about 100 and play it 2x speed, the game played like that is obviously speed up and fake. Or if you even take someone with a score of 75 then play it 1.5x speed, it even still seems obviously speed up. Mohamed's mouse movement doesn't seem too jumpy or anything to me. His rapid click rate is strange though, I found myself able to keep a click rate of over 8 per second when I tried but I don't see how anyone would want to. Even Jake Warner, who was famous a few years back for having a "brutal" fast-clicking playing style didn't ever get close to sup8 clicks per second in his sub40s.

As with any suspected cheater, I think the best way for this guy to prove his skills is to get on minesweeperlive. But until then I personally think Mohamed's scores are real.

Well I'm gonna have to agree that this needs to be relooked at. I watched one of your sub50 games when Damien first posted this, and thought it was in obvious speed up. I didn't think of comparing it to an actul sup80 game sped up though, and feel dumb for not thinking of that xD.

Very much kudo's for actually coming on here and defending your scores so admirably. That already scores high marks in my opinion for how we should approach your videos.

To be honest, the real clincher in the video I watched was not the speed or overflagging, but the fact that you missed quite a few extremely obvious patterns, in much the same way you'd expect a sup80 player to miss them. But, with this YT video, it seems much more reasonable to assume that you merely have one of the most inefficient styles I've ever come across... No offence

And Harryck has a good point. Some footage of your mouse movements (maybe with a nice analog stopwatch/watch or something in frame, just to be sure ) would put to bed most doubts...

Sorry if we're being a pain in accepting your scores as legit, but people have tried wierder things in the past...

Yeah, after seeing this video, it looks like what I thought was unlikely but not impossible - that he is a sweeper with very low efficiency who got used to clicking extremely fast to compensate. For me, watching the play and hearing the mouse clicks is enough to convince me he is legitimate.

PS: The cl/s counter in MSX doesn't work perfectly for flaggers; the Arbiter sub50 has a much more reasonable total cl/s figure of 6.2.

Just jumped onto minesweeperlive, managed 4-17-49 scores on the individual level. Don't know if you guys can check. Lookup MeisterM?

Can appreciate the "inefficiency" criticism. That's always been a drawback. The objective when i first learned this game was to identify mines. And so the incessant flagging stuck. Finished a sub50 game the other day using only 72 flags - was very proud lol (The YT video I think had >90 flags)

I watched the 'live' videos very carefully and they are hard to fake. You can hear the clicking and it matches what you see happen in the game. The game timer goes at the same speed as the live video (this is true when playing the game and also when watching the game video on his computer). The file date information is identical everywhere (you can see the file creation date when he loads the video, see the clock on the computer, and this matches the live video timestamp).

Strange things I can find are:
- The terrible IOE on all levels. (Watch any video, or look at the Highscores table when he loads the game in the two 'live' videos - best IOE are 0.769-0.681-0.584).
- The Highscore table does not have a Beginner IOS record even though it has other Beg records (like time, 3bvs, rqp and ioe).
- He sent pictures of his XP Expert records. This shows 4-19-48 on 17 May and 4-19-46 on 8 July. Maybe he does not like playing Beg and Int.
- Many videos show poor pattern skills or suspiciously quick movement (look at 48.14 for examples of mouse speed). Maybe this is because he chords on almost everything instead of using his eyes?

Good things:
- He has made live videos, and sent over 100 Arbiter and MSX videos to prove his skill
- He made his records on MSX and later tried Arbiter. When you look at his Arbiter HighScore videos, he did not suddenly get good scores (using a program) but instead took several hours on each level to gradually improve his records. His MSX score progression is also gradually over several months.

If that were my style, I would hate hate hate hate hate beg and int. IOE doesn't surprise me either. I thought arbiter didn't record IOS on beginner?
And yes, clicking like that implies that some chords will be very fast.

thefinerminer wrote:- The terrible IOE on all levels. (Watch any video, or look at the Highscores table when he loads the game in the two 'live' videos - best IOE are 0.769-0.681-0.584).

Not surprising given that with the high cls, my correctness is justifiably terrible.

thefinerminer wrote:- The Highscore table does not have a Beginner IOS record even though it has other Beg records (like time, 3bvs, rqp and ioe).

?Cant explain this.

thefinerminer wrote:- He sent pictures of his XP Expert records. This shows 4-19-48 on 17 May and 4-19-46 on 8 July. Maybe he does not like playing Beg and Int.

Never did enjoy playing int and beg - always focused on improving expert times. Only when i came across the world ranking did i see that int and beg times counted as well. Have been playing int a lot more often lately - down to 12.37s.
Also, has anyone noticed a slight lag when playing Arbiter? The board seems to take a split second to respond. Nothing major, but enough to throw me off slightly. Dont feel the same effect on the other versions. Might just be how its installed on my machine?

thefinerminer wrote:- Many videos show poor pattern skills or suspiciously quick movement (look at 48.14 for examples of mouse speed). Maybe this is because he chords on almost everything instead of using his eyes?

Usually very unfocused when playing - thus the chording. Interestingly enough, most of my best expert scores come as shocks, only noticing that a game was fast when its finished.

See here for a video of how i handle the mouse. Couldn't finish a board in the short time. Felt a little inhibited with phone near the mouse - always a good excuse ! Watch from 3.30s for a decent attempt. Might make another video some other time.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npdbweci6Xk

originally i wanted to make a video in which i explain others what needs to be done to analyse a replay (since that would take several hours) but given the reasonable explanations you gave, the huge amount of provided replays, the two youtube videos and the now acceptably good intermediate record and my laziness/lack of time to spend hours watching every single click in all its details i think you can be listed on the rankings.

some explanations: there is no IOS for beginner because arbiter has never shown it. compared to int and exp ios can be very high on beginner and thus it doesn't make much sense to keep track of ios beg records.

the ioe records are normal for that cls, assuming he never played for ioe only

1. MohamedBardouh.zip - All videos sent before being added to the ranking
2. MohamedBardouh-LiveVideo-Arbiter18-041111.3gp - Video of computer with sound as Arbiter is being played
3. MohamedBardouh-LiveVideo-Arbiter52-061111.3gp - Video of computer with sound as Arbiter is being played